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The Miami Dolphins and Joe Philbin: What to Do?

Let's say you are Joe Philbin. Your team has come off three losses in a row to teams that are not that much better than you are, and one of those teams completely blows you out of the water. For the past two weeks your team has faced two of the worst defenses in the league, and those two defensive units have dominated your offense.

You are now 10 games into the season and you know that your defensive unit does fine when they are playing against teams that have little speed in the offensive backfield. When you play a team that has a mobile QB or speed demon for a running back you are over matched.

Your offense has so many holes and weaknesses it is impossible to put a drive together or control the ball for very long. Coming into this year, you knew the offensive line wasn't very good. So you went out and tried to find a few free agents to fill the holes and shore up that unit. Unfortunately two of those players brought here never made the regular season because of injuries. Your best wide receiver basically fired himself after the Pro Bowl last year with a brainless statement about the QB situation in Miami. So you, as a new head coach, sent him packing in short order. Couple that with a young, inexperienced QB that only played 19 games at QB in College. It is easy to see why the offensive unit has struggled so mightily.

Your special teams play has been excellent. It is the only unit on the team you can look at and say, I like what I see. With the exception of the place kicker, they have not made very many mistakes. Your punter, coverage, and return teams are the one bright spot of the team. You could say of the four wins your team has won your special teams has played a huge part, and two of those wins were directly associated to them.

You are now the head coach of a franchise that has a losing mentality that has been ingrained into them for many years now. You seem to have a few players that are simply going through the motions of playing football. They are devoid of any emotions and they are at the point that they don't care about winning. "Just give me my check at the end of the month and I'm good to go"

So here is my question. If you were Joe Philbin, what would you do to turn things around? I have an idea of what I would do. If I could I would like to use a comparison in this case. Say you own a company and you have a few employees that are good workers, but for some reason or other they don't care about the product they are putting out any longer. There is no doubt in your mind they can turn out a good product when they are in the mood to do so. In between those moments they are so disruptive for the other employee's it makes it hard on them to do their jobs.

You see, I have been in that position before and there is only one thing you can do. You must muddle through and locate the source of the problem, and then you must eliminate it. Even at the risk of making your team weaker. As the owner of a small company or its manager, you must do what you must in order to survive.

That is the position that Joe Philbin is in at this moment. Some thing tells me Philbin is about to turn a leaf with this team. The signs have been there all year. He sent Marshall and Davis packing. Last week he threw in a few players at the start of the 3rd quarter and benched some of the regulars. Charles Clay had a larger role, as did Rishard Mathews and Marlon Moore. Young, hungry players that don't know they play for the Miami Dolphins and that they are supposed to lose. That is how you get out of a losing mentality that has plagued this team for years. You simply replace the losers